This week’s most talked about social media tools

This is the 12th of a weekly series, in which every week, we look at five social media tools and platforms that have created some buzz over the last week.

Whether you are a client, work at another PR or marketing agency, or simply an active and enthusiastic online participant, we’ve got some good stuff lined up for you (like we always do).

There have been a bunch of high profile announcements this week including news of the impending release of Twitter’s new web analytics tool, and the launch of SocialBusinessIndex.com – a tool that analyses the social media performance of brands and organisations.

Here are five more tools and platforms worth taking a look at too.

1. Bring the app experience to your desktop with Pokki.com – This is a really useful site. Pokki.com helps you create app-like shortcuts for your desktop. For example, you can add a Facebook app / icon to your primary toolbar giving you direct access to your content. You can even create your own here.

2. An automated grammar check that works? Say hello to Grammarly.com! I know, I know, too good to be true. Well, before you make your mind up you might want to try it first hand. It also contains a plagiarism detection feature and can automatically generate in-text references. Take a quick tour here.

3. Forget Quora and create your own Q&A community with AnswerBase.com – It is worth explaining why this is worth considering before we get into its features. Q&A content is a powerful way of engaging people, providing them with clearly signposted information and advice. Search engines also love Q&A sites because of the repeat traffic they generate. If you find yourself spending a lot of time on creating content with a used-by date without much reward, this is a great way to house and merchandise the valuable evergreen stuff.

4. Two new flight search and tracking tools take off (FlightAware and Google Flights) – FlightAware is neat flight tracking site giving you information in real-time. Google Flights has been launched without much fanfare but gives you another flight price and availability aggregator to add to your bookmarks. [Read our story on Google Flights here.]

5. Keep it short and sweet with Shortmail.com – This services limits your emails to 500 characters or less to help ensure your messages are concise and to the point. Attachments are not allowed either which means you’re ability to drown your recipient in too much information is also limited. Claim your Shortmail address here.

We’d also like to make special mention of the official launch of a new fashion community founded by Poppy Dinsey over at WIWT.com.

That’s it from us for another week.